An Ultimate Guide to Mobile App Development

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What is mobile application development?

Mobile app development refers to the procedure of analysis, front-end design, constant usability testing, and eventual operation of an application that works on a mobile device (smartphones, tablets, wearable). Nowadays mobile applications run on the operating system (OS) android & iOS.

Android OS designed by Google is stated as the most widespread mechanism of mobile application usage.

Apple’s OS is the strength of iPhones & ipads.

In this piece of writing, we will sum up everything you need to know about mobile app development. In case you having a hard time brainstorming the cost, process and anything you need to avoid during the process this is an ultimate guide to all your queries.

What is the ultimate need for a mobile application?

The mobile application has taken over the ultimate consumer behavioural pattern. In the present era where smartphones are in every consumer's pocket, applications can be the ultimate ease for consumers to match their desires at their fingertips. From purchasing a product to using a service mobile application is the ultimate assistance despite the location of the consumer & supplier.

Failure or success of any work depends upon a strong foundation. Every successful work no matter what it is requires a strategy.A mobile app is no exception.With a powerful market and apps having their ultimate monopoly one needs to work efficiently and invest in the right resources.

Mobile app development requires a good budget and day to day maintenance and thus is a costly affair but investing in sustainable resources with proper market research and hiring good resources can save a lot for you.

The design is what the user sees when interacting with your app so invest wisely in it.

A mobile application can act as a huge asset for your business but without correct validation, it is as equal as nothing... Thus, marketing, advertising, and adequate promotional campaigns need to be kept in mind along with working on the website for support.

Too many competitors or many similar products, Let your marketing make the difference.

When you are likely to put in a huge amount of resources, time, and effort it’s crucial to create a prototype and test it with a real audience to get valuable feedback and to know whether they like it and will they use it?

It helps you invest in the right resources when it comes to getting the real thing started.

In this competitive era, many have something out of the box to the table so even if you have hired a reputable agency don't stop the work. Invest yourself in rigorous collaboration, campaigns, workshops and promotional events and make sure to invest in prior market research to have a plan B for every problem that exists already.

Learn from mistakes and have a better action plan.

Mobile app development is a never-ending process. It would be naïve to say that there is no work after the launch when it’s successful. A constant effort such as bug fixing, making creative updates, constant feedback works etc needs to be taken into consideration to keep your community intact.

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Fundamentals to build a successful mobile application

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👉 Swiggy and zomato changed the eating habits of many consumers.

👉 Uber and ola made travelling much more convenient.

👉 Netflix and prime changed the entertainment industry upside down.

👉 Spotify brought all of our favourite songs to our tips.

👉 Big basket got you rid of heavy grocery runs.

Fun fact- The Average Adults Spends 3 Hours and 45 Minutes on a Mobile Device Daily.  

Mobile Users Check Their Smartphones 63 Times a Day.

But do you know all they had in common was an ultimate strategy which I will be discussing right away?

When it comes to creating an app, think about its prior objective, it shouldn’t be created just to stand in the rat race and do it out of FOMO (FEAR OF MISSING OUT).

Know the purpose behind it and it must be different from your website or your eCommerce store. An app must be offering more than just information to your customer base. For that create a business model or more a strategy listed including the cost, targeted audience data, team to be hired, budget to be distributed and work on the roots before planting it.

SWOT analysis refers to knowing the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities & threats that come along with the process of app development. Its ultimate goal is to get rid of the threats coming on the way to plan which saves a lot of money as well as time. It is the key step to avoiding that big ‘Only if I had known earlier’ moment later.

Thus, it would be too naive to claim that SWOT analysis would give you the solution to what app should be built. It just saves you a lot of money and time by providing the solutions to key challenges.

Strengths helps you understand that’s what’s the USP (UNIQUE SELLING PROPOSITION) of the app and would help you create a strong strategy to know your audience and analyze what’s your stand out point? What’s unique about your idea that needs to be framed?

Weakness helps you understand the limitations where you might lack and thus you can analyze and prepare a full proof plan to turn it into an advantage.

Opportunities after analyzing your strengths and weaknesses think about how you can change them into assets and new opportunities. The good part is that opportunities in mobile app development are quite a lot.

Threats When it comes to talking about threats there can be any known or unknown ones during the process of app development for example technology change, change in consumer behaviour or the very recent situation the world faced pandemic. In short, there can be any threat to identify it and ask yourself questions like- Is your app prepared for it? , what would your competitor act in such a situation? And thus prepare a game plan accordingly.

Thus market research is a very crucial step to analysing your target audience and the challenge that could ever come up during the process. You must invest in market analysis before spending a huge amount on the process of application development.

You might be thinking MVP stands for the most valuable person no it's not a game. Here MVP implies the minimum viable product. let's talk about what it is??

You're full of ideas but what would it look like without a proper outline to it.

A minimum viable product refers to a set of details and functionalities that are sufficient to make your app successful at launch. In simple words, it is a structured framework to identify the key added value that closely aligns with your goal.

Now comes the question: how to do it?

The ideal tool for defining an MVP is a design sprint and should be data-centric. It’s a lengthy process of executing workshops with investors, and relevant stakeholders that result in designing and testing a prototype with real-time users.

As I mentioned above in the article why an interactive prototype is crucial before coming to real-time work. It helps you present your idea to potential investors as well as help you identify where your idea and strategy stand after testing it with the potential audience and acquiring their valuable feedback.

Hiring a reliable, well-coordinated team that adds value to your business is the most crucial part of any project.

Here comes the question: to hire an agency or hire a couple of people for your app development process?

Going for hiring an agency can be a much more appropriate option in terms of any major aspect you’ll be taking into consideration like technology, experience, Quality check, and management of departments.

You might think that going for app development agencies is a costly affair but if you fairly go through expenses they come with a systematic budgeting system along with the expertise. They are aware of aspects you might not consider as it's their day to day job. They are familiar with the tools and technology best suitable and most cost-effective and take a clear idea of your goal and act accordingly.

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Since everything is clearly defined, it's time to jump to the development phase. But what must be taken into consideration?

👉 Following the strategy.

👉 Giving attention to the reviews and keeping a quality check.

👉 Giving constant feedback during the data-centric and designing process.

👉 As done with SWOT analysis, acknowledge the difficulties and provide flexible adjustments during the process.

👉 Once you receive the final product it's time for beta testing to obtain multiple rounds of reviews.

👉 Once the app goes through essential testing and review. It's ready to deploy.

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It would be very naive to claim that the application would find its users without having a separate campaign for promotional and marketing activity. Marketing plays a role in getting the traffic to your application and during the process of app building most people don't spare sufficient budget for marketing which leads to failure for most applications.

Thus to save you from this here comes the pre and post-launch promotional activities that can benefit the growth of the app.

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- Create a website and keep the audience up to date.

- Promotion through influencer marketing through creative content.

- Post on company social media to keep the audience up to date.

- Conduct a press release with a powerful message relating to the app.

- App store optimization and applying SEO principles attractively defining the app.

- Guerilla campaigns catch the sight of the audience on the streets using eye-catchy tactics such as flash mob campaigns, prizes to people around by conducting quizzes or games etc.

- Make sure your logo and tagline are impact givers.

- Conduct a launch party as well as the campaign on the streets providing hampers like t-shirts, and mugs to draw attention.

- App installs ad campaigns on social media as well as different applications.

- Rewards for inviting friends.

- Social media advertising by impressive visuals, promotional videos etc.

- CTA on the partner’s website.

- Update all your touchpoints to gain traffic.

- Enable push notifications to engage and make it simple for people to share the app.

- Give interesting rewards on usage to engage like free trials, rewards points for highly used apps etc.

- Work on faqs and personalised customer assistance.

The work doesn’t end post-launch but it would be wise to mention that the real work begins.

This stage includes app promotion, regular maintenance, bug fixing, and updating your application. And to get a hold of your audience's continuous actions needs to be taken into consideration as,

- Analyzing the app’s performance and user behaviour.

- Maintain the roadmap.

- Strategize further releases according to the taste of the audience.

- Conduct constant feedback and work on it.

- Coordinate the app’s maintenance and updates with your other actions.

- Give an appealing attraction to the application but do not overdo it.

Conclusion

Mobile app development is a combination of technical skills and business strategies for your clients and customer base and is becoming one of the most powerful means to boost your business to succeed. No matter what product or service provider one is a mobile app is no longer a limited component it can make you reach out to a huge client base and grow as a whole.

The above blog is a guideline for all your brainstorming queries and shortcomings one needs to keep in mind during the process.

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